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In episode eight of the IcePod, we get to hear back from one of our previous guests – Stefanie Arndt who already spoke with us before leaving for the Arctic (Bonus Episode One). After 145 days away from her home in Bremerhaven, she tells us all about MOSAiC expedition leg 3. Stefanie Arndt is a sea-ice scientist at the German Alfred Wegener Institute, and she has a special sense of snow. While Antarctic snow has been her first love, this time Steffi ventured northern fields and flirted with Arctic snowflakes.
After she managed to survive the shortage of muesli brought from her home just at the end of the transit on board the Russian support icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn that brought leg 3 to the ice camp during the return of sun, Steffi led Team Ice during a challenging time: Not only it was the coldest leg of MOSAiC but there was lots of uncertainty due to very dynamic ice conditions. In addition, the leg got extended because of the pandemic that let no aircraft leaving from Svalbard for the planned exchange with the next leg. But Steffi and her team adapted well to the altered circumstances, studying spring conditions much longer into the season than expected – as the days became longer the sea ice energy and ice albedo changed and eventually the MOSAiC ice floe became a mosaic of floes…
What to do when something's becoming very urgent on the ice? Steffi gives some yet unknown insights to the logistic challenges of MOSAiC. Or did you already know that pee bottles were an item due to the no-pee policy for MOSAiC field work?
Even polar scientists are not immune to Arctic temperatures so one has to find a strategy for sampling snow at -40°C. MOSAiC's Smilla had a pretty elaborate way using warming pads and two layers of warm gloves under her pair of plastic gloves to not contaminate the snow. Another way to keep yourself warm is to "walk five hundred miles" across the ice ridges. Luckily, there was always hot tea when returning from a long day out on the camp to a warm and cosy home called Polarstern.
While Corona was affecting life on land, Steffi and the team of leg 3 had still chance to collect hugs before leaving the ice and go back home. Something she could draw on for the months to come...
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The Surprising Story of Continental Shelf Diplomacy
In reports of increasing tensions, bellicose rhetoric, and renewed “Great Power Competition” in the Arctic Ocean, analysts and the media at large too often mistakenly identify territorial disputes as a source of those tensions. In fact, there are no meaningful territorial disputes in the Arctic Ocean. In 2020, the five States with continental shelf in the Central Arctic Ocean – Canada, Denmark in respect of Greenland, Norway, Russia, and the United States – continue their longstanding collaboration to determine the extent of their respective continental shelves through established scientific, diplomatic, and legal processes.
In the third edition of Polar Perspectives, Dr. Betsy Baker argues that the process for determining the outer limits of continental shelf entitlements is peaceful, rules-based and cooperative in the Arctic. Whatever other tensions may exist between the Central Arctic Ocean shelf States are not based on the ongoing process of resolving continental shelf entitlements in the Arctic.
Download the publication: Arctic Overlaps: The Surprising Story of Continental Shelf Diplomacy
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We are pleased to announce that KEPLER is planning to host an Early Career Scientist Online Workshop for students and young scientists in tentatively Mid-February.
The full agenda and registration will be sent out in Mid January 2021.
Please share the news with your students and young scientists.
KEPLER (Key Environmental monitoring for Polar Latitudes and European Readiness) will run from 1st January 2019 to 31st March 2021 and is an EU Horizon 2020 Coordination and Support Action (CSA) project.
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Arctic Circle has made all previous virtual dialogues available on their official youtube channel.
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The UAF One Health team is proud to announce the rescheduling of our 2020 International One Health, One Future conference!
Join the University of Alaska Fairbanks Center for One Health Research virtually April 6-11, 2021 for one of the largest U.S. conferences on One Health, focused on the Circumpolar North.